Award-winning Author Judythe Morgan

I’m drowning in email. Are you?

For two weeks we’ve packed, hauled away unwanted stuff, shared last-time-living-in-the-same-city meals with family and friends, packed our household, loaded a trailer and a U-Haul, and drove one thousand miles to our new home.

There was no time to spend on the computer checking email. Conversations were via text or cell phone.

I did skim email for personal correspondence, but didn’t stop to read or delete all the other email that came in. Every day I watched the total grow.

Newsletters, blogs, group digests, notifications from social media… an email tsunami.

When I checked today, I have over 900 emails in my inbox.

I can’t believe it. I’m drowning in email.

The whole situation makes me realize I’m handling over one hundred emails per day. That much email reading has to be cutting into my writing time and productivity.

I think it’s time to analyze my email. Something I’ve never done.

Do I need to be receiving that many newsletters, blogs, group digests, and notifications?

I’m not sure.

I am sure that culling through all the emails I’ve accumulated will take time even if it’s time pressing the delete key.

Time I don’t have with all those boxes to unpack and a deadline looming.

Email has got to be tamed.

What about you? Does your email cut into your productivity?

Next Monday, I’ll be sharing some tips on how I plan to wrestle my email situation into submission.

Be sure to stop by and, in the meantime, if you have any tips, please share.

5 Comments on “I’m drowning in email. Are you?”

Great topic Judythe and one I think a lot of folks struggle with. It’s not just the volume but the expectation of response time. If Sue sends what she regards as a VIP email at 3:00 on Tuesday she usually expects an answer back on Tuesday. We’ve trained ourselves to respond in a timely manner. But what’s important to Sue may not be as vital to you so if your response is delayed by a day or two you may receive two more emails from Sue. So it becomes the volume + expectation of response time = pressure. Hope you come up with some ideas for putting a fence around it. Using a timer can sometimes be helpful or not handling any email until pages are written and then responding to what you value the most before responding to the most urgent if that makes sense 🙂

I totally agree that the expectations on response time place extra pressure. Timer works for me, but the flood of mail keeps coming and the inbox swells while I’m not reading email. So I think I need to analyze what email I’m getting from what bloggers, what newsletters, etc. Gonna work on a definite strategy and share. Thanks for great suggestions.